ShouldaCouldaWoulda

He is probably useful on the 25 man roster...for this team. But, lets be completely honest that this guy is nothing special and never will be for any great length of time. He might get and stay hot for longer than he ever should, but that happens with several other nobody's. I never believed in the nobody's who played decent for short periods of time like Tyner, Lew Ford, and several of the other past one hit wonder Twins OF's through the years, who I do not feel like looking up.

I agree that finding the "Hughes" is rare. The more fitting headline would be, "who's the next Palfrey/Nolasco?"

A simple "yes" would have been suffice Chief. I will have my GF review future posts to lessen the likeliness of idiocy.

I see what you are saying, and I do not think looking at ANY age groups gives you a clear idea of the future. Looking at a teams minor league system alone though is even less useful than looking at a teams 25 and under players. I posted the article as reference and I just thought others would enjoy looking at it. I by no means feel that is the way to judge our future, like I mentioned earlier some teams will spend and hit on FA's and trades, be more or less healthy, and some teams will have better luck with their prospects panning out. I love what we have coming up and think we are in pretty good shape for the future, I just think that looking at prospects alone is ridiculous when there are already young studs producing in the majors for other teams that will have youth AND experience on their side in the future, while still being fairly cheap, or having trade value. I was just trying to bring in a more complete perspective of the future. That is all I was doing. I am an all out Twins homer too. I just like to look at things from several angles, and that was just not one I have seen others bringing into the mix, so I thought it would be fun to discuss.

Congrat Mike! Yeah, from what I have read it seems like everyone is pretty cool here with each others opinions. For the most part no one is saying anything all that ridiculous, so it is pretty easy to be cool with small differences in opinion. Do I win the worst posts of the discussion?!

That was completely my point from my earlier posts. Like I stated the Twins were ranked 13th for 25 and under talent. But, the part that scares me is that even some of those teams ranked worse than us might outspend or trade to better their future situations. I am excited about the young talent we have. I obsess about them too much myself, but I recently realized that looking at minor league prospects by itself is not smart when predicting future success. Our minor league system might be better than the Marlins system, but their entire starting rotation is 25 and under and they're succeeding at the majors. They also have Stanton, Yelich, and Ozuna all under 25 who are starting and succeeding in their OF in the majors. Now add their guys from the minors to the picture and you get really excited. However, their ownership makes ours look awesome. I am just stating that we need to look at our future talent in terms of our entire organization, not just our minors, and then compare that to that of other teams. St Louis is another team with a bunch of young guys already performing well in the majors. Being ranked as the #1 minor league system probably doesn't really mean as much as I had hoped it did. Sigh.

http://www.baseballprospectus.com/article.php?articleid=22944 Here is the rankings. I like a lot of those other teams top 10 guys 25 and under better than ours, especially some of the other teams guys have proven themselves at the majors and are younger than some of our prospects in the minors. Interesting to see where land in next years rankings. I think we might fall further down the list even. '

For example, I went to Fangraphs and looked at SP's ages 20-25 for this past year (Meyer is 24 and May is 25.) I chose 50 IP at the MLB level for a random reference point to start looking at them. There were 45 SP's ages 25 or under with at least 50 IP that had a FIP under 4.00. May missed this cut by by about 4 innings, but had a 4.73 FIP, and Meyer hasn't pitched a single inning in the majors. That is 45 STARTING pitchers 25 or younger (with small sample sizes) that have already reached the majors and also pitched with success this year. Some other talented names have been called up to their teams bullpens or have underperformed like May.

I realize that everyone is all jacked up about the Twins minor league prospects, and that we have been ranked top 3 in that area the past few years, but that is deceiving if you are trying to gauge of teams future. Prospect rankings list may not be the best way to look at a teams future, as it does not account for the major league lineups. Several teams best young players advance to the majors quickly, and some teams are more aggressive about this than others. I always kind of wondered why I never hear organizations being discussed in this fashion. I came across some under 26 and under 25 rankings after doing some research. These seem like a much better way of assessing a teams true future talent. Just because a really young stud has reached the majors does not mean he should not be accounted for in that teams future. Those players should be considered along with the minor league system. Baseball Prospectus had the Twins as the best minor league system this year. However, the Twins 25 and under ranking was 13th in the league. Guys that have made the majors should actually be weighted more heavily when forecasting a teams future. We are just average in the under 25 departments because all of our players are prospects, which mean less reliable talent. Something to consider here that is rarely discussed when talking about the Twins bright future. I wonder how many of those 12 teams ranked above the Twins are to be more likely to supplement those future teams with spending on FA's and resigning FA eligible in-house talent? I know this is a more pessimistic way to look at our future, but I am just trying to be realistic in our constant hanging on to the hope of being save by the young prospects.

Dumb Stubborn. Sorry, I was by no means trying to be a bully or hurt anyones feelings about Gardy. Both Gardy and Ryan probably have higher intelligence levels than I do, and I genuinely have always thought Gardy is a great guy and would love to have a beer with him, but he seems more suited for 3B coach role or something along that lines. I do not have a clue how much they use advanced statistics, but there definitely isn't any articles our there claiming the Twins are doing a great job in this area. When using the word dumb, I only meant it in terms of using shifts/shades, platoons, etc, which IS clear he did not use nearly enough.

"Guys were played out of position, he refused to platoon players, the Twins are among the least likely teams to shift defensively, he used his closer in a very limited, sometimes nonsensical role" This. We need to do something about this. I just posted on the forum about this, right before I read this. The Twins need to be near the top of the league at advanced statistics research for both team makeup through free agency, trade, and drafts, but also for in game decisions. We also need a staff not only willing to use these stats, but realizes that it is beneficial to. I don't trust Ryan to use advanced stats, and clearly Gardy didn't care about them.

Odds of a near future Thorpe surgery?

I just don't see a lot of meaningful changes happening before next season. Changes? Yes, but just not meaningful ones. Another thing we need to start doing is selling high on current and minor league players, especially if we aren't buying into the results. I feel like we buy low every now and then and take chances, but rarely do we do a good sell high, even when its an obvious thing to do. I am thinking 'Will from two years ago as an obvious one. I am not buying Santana's rookie results, think Dozier will drop off next year greatly, KS is not replicating his offensive numbers and is terrible framer too. Package some of these guys with a decent to good prospect for some big moves. Maybe Stewart? I don't think he ever lives up to the original hype, whatever anyone says about the reasons for his low k/9 numbers are.

I have heard the talk of him handling the staff well, but is that quantifiable? Not sure they are all that accurate, but all of the advanced statistics for catcher defense show him to be one of the worst catchers in the league. Terrible framing, range, and throwing runners out. Looks like he just doesn't miss the easy balls to block is all. If a guy is likable and outgoing, would that ever possible lead others to say good things about him? Maybe he really does call a good game, but are there many catchers that call really bad games? He just doesn't seem to pass the eye test as a good catcher while watching him either. Maybe I am missing something, I am not buying his bat though either. Can't remember where I read it recently, but there was an article that showed that pitchers have started to simply challenge him straight down the plate and its working. Means they don't fear his bat. All that said, its not like we have a better option..im just not buying into him being all that good defensively or offensively. He does seem likable and i hope i am wat wrong on him.